Brendan Elliott, spokesperson for HRM, said the tender seeks to renew a service the city already has. Pest controllers currently do monthly rounds to specified municipal parks and buildings.

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“It’s a very fluid list,” Elliott said, referring to the list of several dozen sites that were attached to the tender.

All the ferry terminals, the Khyber Centre for the Arts, Halifax Regional Police headquarters, several community centres and libraries, Halifax City Hall, Sackville Sports Stadium and several fire stations are among the buildings currently being monitored. Halifax Public Gardens gets weekly service.

“We’re constantly adding and removing names of facilities that we deem to be regularly monitored. …The list tends to include facilities that are near the water, naturally that’s where perhaps we would find more of a rodent problem,” Elliott added.

HRM spent about $50,000 on pest control in 2016-17, according to Elliott. Some of that would have gone to scheduled monitoring and control measures. Emergency responses to bug and rodent infestations would have chewed up some of that budget, too, but Elliott couldn’t provide a specific cost breakdown.

According to the tender, the city asks pest controllers to use both non-chemical and insecticide methods for bug problems, and traps and bait boxes for rodents. Netting is used to deter birds from roosting in the awnings of buildings like the Keshen Goodman Public Library. City buses are sprayed with an unspecified substance twice annually.

When asked about the extent of the pest problem in Halifax, Elliott said he could only speak for municipal buildings, where bugs and rodents were “just about the same as for any landlord that has buildings in the downtown.”

He was more specific about rats, which are a quintessential pest in Halifax, as in many port cities. He suggested an uptick in demolition and construction in Halifax in the past few years could be moving the rat population around.

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“The perception might be that we have more rats, but everything I’ve been told is that that’s not necessarily so. What is happening is that we’re seeing them more because they’re being uprooted from their usual homes and are now trying to find other places to go.”

Halifax councillors agreed in July that they’d like municipal staff to report back on the possibility of developing an integrated pest management strategy, which would be “more proactive and transparent in its management of pests.”

Taryn Grant is a Halifax-based reporter focusing on education. Follow her on Twitter: @tarynalgrant